[bksvol-discuss] Most Enjoyable Books - 2011 Planning

Bookshare Volunteers,
I want to publicly recognize Denise Thompson for her work managing the
Bookshare Volunteers' Most Enjoyable Books List project. The research has been
done on which we have in the collection and it is attached in Excel,
tab-delimited text, and .PDF. You will see that there are some gaps. Would
everyone who submitted their favorites read through the list and see if one of
those we could not locate is yours and we perhaps have the title or author
spelled incorrectly.
These missing books in the list are now open for scanners to claim and get
started on. If a proofer knows they want to team up on a title please announce
that to the list also. Those books that remain orphaned at the end of next week
will be turned over to staff in-house to work on.
As a thank you to Denise a donor is adding the latest book in the Corina
Chapman series by Kerry Greenwood "Forbidden Fruit." http://tinyurl.com/2ccouxf
A side note about 2011:
We have all had to adjust to the new ways that books come into Bookshare. Many
books that scanners would have eagerly taken up now come straight from
publishers. You may have noticed that even in-house we have moved to using the
same book for training all new proofers because of the difficulty of finding
appropriate level 2 books in quantity.
At the same time, volunteer-added books have been the central force in
Bookshare's collection development strategy. We work to amplify your voice
alongside the influence of PQ additions by calling for lists of what you have
read, what publishers and genres you prefer, and even re-engineering the search
function on the site so you can find Fair and Good quality books to rescan
because many are books added by volunteers.
So you will see me asking for this sort of input. This is part of what I mean
when I say that my mandate in 2011 is to help you move to whatever is the next
level of satisfaction and quality in your work.
But as the year goes on you will increasingly need to generate strategies among
yourselves for shaping the collection and sustaining this community - much like
the constant sparking that goes on across the list when someone uncovers a new
series or a new author and a scan/proofing partnership comes into being. In
coming weeks I will be helping those who have already contacted me about
forging such partnerships and projects. Write to me if you have a collection of
books that you want help scanning into the collection, a subject area that you
want to research for books we don't yet have, or other creative ideas that I
can help you launch early in the year before I am pulled into other aspects of
managing the volunteer program. We are going to experiment together with some
new ways of getting things done.
Scott Rains
Benetech Fellow
scottr@xxxxxxxxxxxx